Waiting on Wednesday: The Drowning Game by Dusti Bowling

Image: Hachette Book Group

The Drowning Game by Dusti Bowling. 288 p. Union Square & Company/ Hachette Book Group, October 13, 2026. 9781454957089.

I saw a tweet the other day from Dusti Bowling announcing her YA debut. Her book, Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, was our One Book, One School choice in the fall of 2023. The PTO paid for Ms. Bowling to visit the school at the culmination of our school-wide read in November. (Unfortunately for me, I was hospitalized about a week later and ended up on a medical leave for a long time.) Her presentation was fun and engaging.

 I have read and enjoyed most of her middle grade novels and really look forward to her YA debut.

The Drowning Game is due out on October 13, and here's the publisher synopsis: 

Award-winning author Dusti Bowling masterfully crafts a wild ride on Arizona’s Salt River in this thriller inspired by Hitchcock’sVertigo that’s perfect for fans of Holly Jackson and Karen M. McManus.

It’s the late 1990s, and seventeen-year-old Christian is content with his summer plans to work and hang out with his cat, when he gets a phone call from his best friend that will change his life forever. James invites Christian to Arizona for a whitewater rafting trip, even though he knows Christian is terrified of water. But James is persuasive, and Christian relents.

In Salt River Canyon, the heat is scorching, and so is James’s pretty girlfriend, Freya. However, something seems off between the couple as bitter words fly. When James and the others disappear in the second raft, Christian and Freya are left to face the rapids alone. Disaster strikes when Freya falls into the river, and Christian is frozen with fear.

One year later, Christian is still wracked with guilt over Freya’s death. Now, he’s a freshman at Arizona State University, and he thinks he sees Freya on campus. It can’t be her. Freya is dead, after all. They found her body. Didn’t they? Christian follows Madison, the girl who looks like Freya, everywhere. He was certain Freya had died that day, but now he’s certain Madison is Freya. Will he ever find out what’s real? Or will his obsession be his downfall?

There were a ton of Karen McManus fans at my school, so they should be stoked for this. Happy reading!

Waiting on Wednesday: 1-2-3-4, I Declare a Thumb War by Lisi Harrison and Daniel Kraus

Image: Union Square & Co.

1-2-3-4, I Declare a Thumb War by Lisi Harrison and Daniel Kraus. Graveyard Girls #1. 256 p. Union Square Kids/ Union Square & Co. September 6, 2022. 97814540944546.

Waiting on Wednesday features 1-2-3-4, I Declare a Thumb War by Lisi Harrison and Daniel Kraus. This sounds like the perfect book for middle grade fans of horror.

Publisher synopsis: New York Times bestselling authors Lisi Harrison and Daniel Kraus deliver a slightly scary, extremely addictive, contemporary middle-grade series. 

Meet Whisper, Frannie, Sophie, Gemma, and Zuzu, five friends from Misery Falls, Oregon. The town is abuzz as the 100th anniversary of the electrocution of Misery Falls’ most infamous killer, Silas Hoke, approaches. When a mysterious text message leads the girls to the cemetery—where Silas Hoke is buried!—life can’t get any creepier. Except, yes, it can thanks to the surprise storyteller who meets them at the cemetery, inspires the first-ever meeting of the Graveyard Girls, and sets the stage for a terrifying tale from Whisper that they’ll never forget.